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“Parenthood,” Cats & Trees

It was supposed to look like this!

I’m not a holiday kind of gal. Christmas is for families, not couples.

But I’ve been sick this week, with the cold from hell. Really. I was so wrecked from cold pills and Nyquil that I binge-watched Season 4 of Parenthood, a high-end prime time soap opera (2010-2015). I love the characters, three generations of the Braverman family, who are beautiful, talented, dysfunctional, and occasionally very annoying. Sarah (Lauren Graham from The Gilmore Girls) wrecked her relationship with her fiance, Mark (Jason Ritter), the most adorable English teacher on the planet, to accompany her moody photographer boss, Hank (Ray Romano), to L.A. for a “work” weekend. (Sarah, you will never find anyone like Mark again!) Julia, a corporate lawyer on the partner track, made a huge mistake at work and surprisingly resigned to stay home with her adopted son, Victor. And my favorite character on the show, Christina (Monica Parter), had breast cancer. Poor Christina! She’s the rock of her family. The season was very dramatic.

Christmas is a big deal for the Bravermans. Nobody acts out on Christmas. It’s TV. And I loved Julia’s Christmas decorations.

And so I decided to decorate. My options were limited, since I was sick. I ordered two artificial trees, a 6-ft.-tall tree for the living room and a small tabletop tree for the study. I mean I’m not going to get real trees, right? I’m not going to plant them afterwards.

My plan? I would assemble the trees while my husband was at work and surprise him.

Want to know how this went for me?

First, the 6-ft. tree came without an instruction booklet. I was told there were no spare instruction booklets and offered a discount. I assembled it by myself–sort of. You have to “fluff out” the branches. Ouch. They’re scratchy. And the bolts didn’t fit in the tree stand. It was wobbly. It looked okay once decorated.

And, yup, after I left the room, the cats knocked it over. Now it’s leaning against the bookcase in the study. Rickety, but Christmasy.

The tabletop tree is fine! A nice steady stand, thank God. Since it can stand up alone, it’s in the living room. But the cats are hilarious. Unfortunately they will not leave the decorations alone.

Forget the ball-shaped ornaments. The two youngest cats jumped up and down athletically, determined to rip them off the tree. The balls are now cat toys.

I hope you’re feeling better. Because until this year we’ve been a multiple cat household, too, we haven’t had a Christmas tree since the early 90s. We adopted a cat family that included mother and four kittens. Some of the kittens tried to climb the tree, some of them chewed on the needles. For the safety of the cats (and our sanity), we nixed the tree. Just never think about having a tree even though we’re currently catless.

Cats love baubles too much! Got up this morning and they had managed to remove a surprising number of them. Yes, cats and trees don’t seem to go together. It IS funny, but not if we had nice deocrations! Ours are cheap.

Sorry to hear you’ve been under the weather – it does seem to be that kind of year! And your cats *so* made me laugh – since cats own wherever they live, it’s inevitable they’re going to regard the trees as fair game! 🙂

Yes, there are cooties getting passed around out there! It’s a bad year for colds and flu. I was getting ready to rip up sheets and make handkerchiefs when my husband came home with kleenex. Yes, the trees belong to the cats now!

It’s good that you can laugh and be cheerful about it. Christmas depresses me: it makes all that is hard so much worse because all around others are asserting how happy they are, especially with their family and friends (I have few family members, only one I see who lives with me), and almost no local friends; then I am told about their wonderful doings, and how beautiful their decorations are (implicitly) through photos. I have a small real tree which I and my daughter decorated, a set of lights on my one small outside tree, send cards to friends (mostly Net & FB made or related, other family members), go out and do all the things others do, mildly. But it is a great strain.

Giving gifts is so much pressure,and I remember wandering around a mall when my mom was in the nursing home, trying to find something to give her and realizing that nothing was quite right. It was heart-breaking: she loved Christmas. And since then we haven’t really “celebrated” but this year I felt able to face a tree again. It definitely can be a painful holiday. But she loved decorating, so I thought we’d do a little of that.